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Village chief in Burundi playing with his
child as part of a community discussion about the role of men in caring for
children. Credit: Gary Barker/Promundo. All rights reserved.

In 1999,
while conducting interviews with young men involved in gangs in Chicago, I met
Tony. The son of immigrants from Mexico, Tony had spent time in prison for gang
activity. The tattoos on his face marked him as a gang member, and he was
undergoing a painful process of laser surgery to have them removed because of the
harassment he faced from police, former gang members and rival gangs.

Tony was
bitter, both at the gang members who didn’t end up in prison and at a world
that treated him like a walking problem.
He was a marked man wherever he went, seen as either a potential criminal
or a potential rival. He couldn’t get a job because of his prison record.

On the
cold winter evening that we talked, his life didn’t look very promising. I
asked him, “How will you stay out of the gang and not go back to that life?”

Tony
pointed to his young daughter, who was sleeping in his lap. “Her, man, she’s
the reason,” he said.

Tony is
not unique. In one of the largest
studies ever carried out on gang violence in the United States, researchers
followed almost 1,000 low-income young men in Boston aged over 45 years. They
found that being married, a father and strongly connected to their children were
key factors in keeping men out of gangs and criminal activity. The same
conclusion emerged from interviews
I carried out with young men who participated in gangs in Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil.

The
evidence is clear: caring for children and for others transforms men. But if
that is the case, why don’t more men care?

The
answers are both personal and political. At the personal level, many men don’t
see caregiving as their role. Maybe they grew up in households where women and
girls did all the care work, or maybe they simply follow the dominant social
norms. Either way, too few men are prepared to accept an equal share of caregiving
responsibility.

At the
political level, both men and women need help to do caregiving in the form of affordable
daycare, flexible leave, paid maternity and paternity leave, and other forms of
support.

Both levels
need to be addressed simultaneously. Personal commitment to doing care work is
vital, but it easier for some men and women to translate it into action because
of their position in society. That’s why action on the political side of the
equation is just as important.

At the
same time I was interviewing young men like Tony in Chicago, my own daughter
was born. I was working on my doctorate in child development, studying brain development
and attachment, and sharing care-giving responsibilities with my partner.

One day,
as I was leaving class early, some of my fellow students said, “You’re leaving
to be the babysitter.” They said the word “babysitter” in a condescending
tone.

“I’m not
a babysitter, I’m a caregiver,” I told them slowly so they could understand me.
They looked at me as if I were speaking a foreign language.

Getting
men to do half of the world’s care work means changing what it means to be a man.
It’s also one of the keys to ending violence against women and children. It’s essential
to achieving equality for women. And research shows that in taking on more responsibility
for caregiving, men’s lives improve as well.

According to the World Health
Organization, one in three women worldwide has experienced physical
violence from a partner.
A vast
majority of countries have made it a crime for men to use violence against
their wives or partners, but, with a few exceptions, there is little
evidence that violence against women is declining.

However, research is consistent in affirming whichmen are more likely to use violence in this way. In surveys that Promundo and its partners
have carried out, men who witnessed their fathers or other men use violence
against their mothers when they were children are twice as likely to commit
similarly-violent acts later on. Men who believe that they are entitled to sex
with women are more likely to commit rape. And men who have themselves
experienced violence as children are more likely to use violence when they are
adults.

Which men are less
likely to use violence against women? According to the International
Men and Gender Equality Survey (or IMAGES),
the answer is clear: men whose fathers didn’t use
violence; men whose fathers treated their mothers with respect, and shared
decision-making responsibilities with them in the home; and men whose fathers cared
for them when they were growing up. What men do as caregivers every day can either strengthen
or interrupt these violent cycles.

One of the few countries where violence against women
has declined is Norway.
Since the late 1980s, Norway has promoted equal pay for women, extensive family
leave, and, since 1993, paid paternity leave. Twenty years later, violence
against women and children had
decreased by a third, partly because these policies have enabled men to do more
of their share of caregiving. Now, Norway is ranked as one of the most gender-equitable
countries in the world nearly every year.

There has been nothing short of a global revolution in
many aspects of gender equality over the past 20 years. According to the World
Bank’s 2012 World Development
Report, women now make up 40 per cent of the paid workforce, and half of
the world’s food producers. With some exceptions, girls today are as likely as
boys to be in primary school. Fewer women die during childbirth. There are more
women in politics, in business, in government, and working outside of their
homes than ever before.

But with all these changes, who still cares for
children? In the Global South, women and girls do two
to ten times more of the unpaid domestic and care work than men.

In the Global North, men do between 20 and 40 per cent of the care work, at
least in Europe according to a 2012
study by the European Commission. But while men’s incomes continue to
rise, women’s incomes hit a ceiling, and expensive daycare pushes women out of
the labour market. After having children, women are far more likely to move to
part-time work. According to the same
study, the result is a Europe-wide gender pay-gap of 16 per cent, and in the
US, a gap of more than 20
points.

The implication of these statistics is unambiguous: if
we want equal pay and other forms of equality for women, then men have to do
more of the caregiving.

The benefits to children are also evident.
Girls raised in households with more equitable relationships are less likely to
experience unwanted sex. Men who have stronger relationships with their
children contribute more of their incomes to their households, so their
children are less likely to grow up in poverty. Women are
more likely to report safe and calm birthing processes, to breastfeed and
to seek prenatal care when their partners are more involved in birth, pregnancy
and caregiving.

About 80 per
cent of men in the world will be biological fathers at some point in their
lives, and the rest will have parents or other children who also need caring for.
But what many men don’t realize is this: getting more involved in caregiving is
good for everyone, including men themselves.

A recent
article in the Lancet confirms
that men lead women in every one of the top ten causes of premature death and
chronic health problems. Men are four times more likely to commit suicide and
two times more likely to drink or smoke too much compared to women. In Europe,
men die five years earlier than women on average. Women have cancer more often
than men, but men die from cancer earlier. Why? Because men don’t go in for
preventive health care, and they don’t take care of themselves when they get
sick.

The IMAGES
study, for example, found that men were more likely to go to a prenatal visit
with their partners than they were to visit a doctor for their own health
needs. Building on this finding, the Brazilian Ministry of Health enacted a
“prenatal protocol for men.” When men accompany their pregnant partners to
prenatal clinics, health providers encourage them to make another appointment
for a check-up for themselves.

What does men’s health have to do with their caregiving
responsibilities? Studies
from Sweden and the USA have found that men who report close connections to
their children live longer,
have fewer mental health problems, are less likely to abuse drugs, are more
productive at work, and report being happier than men who are not connected to
their children. Caring for others helps men to care for themselves, and men’s
lives are made richer and happier when they do.

Gender equality and reducing violence against women are
impossible to achieve without equality in caregiving. The daily care of others
is as important as anything else that men or women will do in their lives. Indeed,
developmental
psychologists, evolutionary
psychologists and neuroscientists
have all affirmed that human beings are hard-wired to care for, and live in
close social connection with, one another. But caregiving is still seen and
organized primarily as the work of girls and women. It’s time this was ended.

Caregiving is neither male nor female; it’s what helps
to make us all human.

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